The subject of electoral reforms has been attracting increasing interest in South Africa. Nearly two years ago, a panel of experts was commissioned to investigate how Parliament could improve its work. The panel recently recommended that South Africa’s electoral system be reformed into a mixed system that would include a constituency- based electoral system as one of its components. But even before publication of this report, several parliamentary actions had reignited public calls for electoral reform. Parliament’s resolution disbanding the highly successful crime-busting unit, the Scorpions, was one such action. Parliament took this step acting upon the instructions of the ruling party and initially undermining the required public participation process required by law. This suggests that in the South African Parliament, the interests of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) trump those of the general public. Such indifference to public sentiment highlights the perils of a system – i.e., Proportional Representation (PR) - that encourages indebtedness of Members of Parliament (MPs) towards their party leadership over accountability to the general public. As a result, electoral reform has become a campaign issue, featuring in the manifestos of nearly all of the opposition parties.